Good morning teachers and fellow schoolmates,
It’s my pleasure to have the opportunity to have a few last words with all of you who are going to leave the school and embark on your separate paths soon. Indeed I share the happiness of each of you, and I most certainly also share your antipathy towards long-winded lectures, so I’ll try my best to keep what I’m going to say from being too didactic and clichéd.
I’m fully aware that many of you may already have great plans ahead of you, and great dreams you are determined to pursue, but I’d also like to draw attention to those who haven’t yet figured out the way of life they’re going to live. Time is the essential element that we’ve got to make use of — with it we prevail, without it we fail.
Time is ever-running. The arm of the clock can be stopped when we will it to, but the clock of nature never does stop. Nor can time be reversible. Let one minute pass, and bygones are literally bygones. Even if we really pulled off devising a machine able to bring us back to the past, I doubt very much we can relive every past moment.
I’m not sure anyone of you here has heard of the Rolling Stones or, specifically the song ‘Time Waits For No One’. In the song a verse goes ‘Time can tear down a building or destroy a woman’s face’. And yes, the course of time has definitely diluted the fame of the Stones, one of the foremost bands in the 70s. But that’s not the point. The point is, we never notice how fast and easily time can glide by, through the edge of our fingers. How often is it when we wake up and find ourselves nothing more compared to our ‘yesterday-self’. William Shakespeare hits the bitter truth, probably for himself, in Richard II, ‘I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.’
Still more Shakespeare, ‘On the great clock of time, there is but one word, Present’. Procrastination is the thief of time, and so it goes. On the incessant, unstoppable passage of time we should have resolute in continuing our journey. We should also be courageous to face our situation, however hard it is too accept. Never dwell on ideas too long — act them out, and that’s the only way we’ll be able to turn time into our friend. Bill Gates stuck to his goal, and within years he oriented his Microsoft empire. We may not have ambitions as such, and that only makes our day easier. You’ll be sorry when time has turned to your back as a foe.
I may be doing too much preaching, as I’m just about to say, ‘have no fear’. But yes, have no fear, for if you make good use of it, the years ahead of you is going to be your greatest asset. So seize the moment, seize the day and, never let yourself regret.
Now we get to the main course, the cruxof the matter. How do we seize every moment? The answer may well be in your mind. True, by making plans, after all that mental preparation, resolute, courage and all. A plan is very powerful too, if you haven’t realized. It can help you differentiate the feasible and unfeasible, the important and the not-so-urgent. Long-term goals can be grand but those designed to be reached in a short period of time should be pragmatic. Otherwise, when your mighty plan gets thwarted, you tend to either procrastinate or dodge the reality, which both condone the creeping away of time.
That is, once we make a practical blueprint of the things we mean to do, we should stick to it and never shy away from it. For on each segment of the road you waste a second, when you reach the situation you’ll find, you’ve missed the train.
Once again. Not that we are to become slaves of the sprinting time, time is a friend of ours, and through it awaits no one, it’s the indispensable ingredient to success.
So what now? ‘The best time to plant an oak tree is 25 years ago. Second best time is today.’ Let’s hit the trail today. Launch our plans and, seize every single moment when we are still keeping each of our sweet breaths. No point to covet it anymore once we’ve become ghosts, that is.
Hope you find my sharing more than unhelpful, and may I congratulate you once again on the accomplishments that you’ve had and the journey made so far. Thank you.